Illuminar Gaming allegedly owes its League of Legends team €50,000+

According to the Polish esports side Eweszlo, current Polish League of Legends champion and European Masters Finalist Illuminar Gaming owes its League of Legends team more than 200,000 Polish złoty, or 50,000 Euros.

Sources close to the team claim that Illuminar hasn’t paid the salaries of players, or staff related to the League-team, for the months of March, April, June, and July.

After salaries had not been paid in March and April, the organization and the players came to together to discuss the situation in May. The players were promised a salary raise, in addition to soon receiving their salaries for the months of March and April, but this raise ended up being a raise on paper only. The salaries were never paid either.

The players were also allowed to look for other teams during this time but decided to stay with Illuminar based on the promises of the organization.

According to the report, the League of Legends team isn’t the only one affected: Several employees and players within other esport divisions have also not received their due salary.

In response to the Polish report, Michał Durczok, CEO of Illuminar, has issued the following statement:

“In connection with upcoming articles, I am forced to issue a statement. Most of the things described in the articles will be true. It is true that Illuminar Gaming owes LoL players and trainers payment for a period of three months. It is true that these amounts were to be settled several times and I asked players to postpone the deadlines because of delays in discussions with investors from various business circles.”

Durczok adds that there were allegedly people interested in buying Illuminar shares, but withdrew last second, causing the end of cash flow for Illuminar:

“The players believed in my words, I believed in the words of people who declared themselves buying Illuminar shares, withdrawing shortly before the end of the time of signing the share sale agreement.”

He ends the statement with the sentence: “I apologize to all those who failed, who believed in Illuminar Gaming.”

Despite all these controversies and seeming lack of funding, IhG recently signed Dawid “Dawido” Florczyk as a Hearthstone player.

What will happen to Illuminar Gaming in the next few months remains to be seen. The organization is now eagerly looking for funding.

Illuminar Gaming is the former team of current Team Vitality Jungler Kikis, former LCS Botlaner Woolite is also currently signed with the team.

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Darius is an esports journalist trying to nurture esports culture whenever possible. He got into esports while finishing his Bachelor in Journalism, and has been a regular EU LCS attendee since January 2017.